


How Do You Choose Not to Feel?

by rabidchild67



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach has too many feels filming <i>that scene</i> in STID.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do You Choose Not to Feel?

**Author's Note:**

> Baby’s first Pinto – be kind. 
> 
> Also, what I know about acting and filmmaking you could fit into a thimble, therefore this is likely to be highly inaccurate.

It was going to be a hard day, Zach knew that going in. 

Yesterday had been hard too, but in a different way – they’d filmed the sequence where Spock had come running into Engineering to discover his friend dying behind the protective glass of the main core reactor. Lots of running – thank God he’d actually taken the time to perfect his form for that, that’s all he was thinking at the time – but the corner he’d had to turn to get into this portion of the set was tight, and he’d bounced off the walls a few time in the process. His upper right arm was sore and bruised, and Burk had taken to calling him “Clumsy the Vulcan” for the rest of the day.

There was no joking like that today, though. Today Chris was going to die.

Well, Jim Kirk was going to die – to sacrifice himself for the greater good in a heroic gesture that was a direct ripoff – make that homage – of the ending of _The Wrath of Khan_ , but it was still a plot development that Zach was behind all the way. The changing-up of the narrative in this way was something he thought was really fresh and interesting, and he’d been eager to film it since their first table read. Until today. Until he had had to watch Chris die all morning. _Jim._ Jim was dying. 

Dammit, his head just wasn’t on straight today.

They’d decided to film Chris’s pickups first, the camera and crew positioned right over Zach’s left shoulder; they were going to film it from three different angles. The first two go-rounds had gone relatively well – exactly like they had in the run-through – and they were set up for the final one. The cameras were going to pick up Chris’s face in close-up; it was going to be intense, and they both knew it. JJ had cleared the set of all but the most essential crew so that the two of them could play an increased intimacy in the scene, and for that Chris seemed grateful.

“Action!” 

“Jim,” Zach delivered his first line.

“How’s our ship?” 

Zach looked down at Chris – God, he looked so wrecked. He thought the sheen of sweat on him was mostly real – the small section of the set where they were was hot as hell, but JJ wanted it that way. “Out of danger. You saved the crew.”

“You used what he wanted against Khan. That was a nice move.”

“It is what you would have done.”

Chris’s face trembled somewhat, “And this. This is what you would have done. It’s only logical.” _The needs of the many…_ Chris took a labored breath; when he looked up, there were tears in his eyes, panic. “I’m scared, Spock. Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel?”

Zach lowered his head. He knew if he spoke now, his voice would break. “Can we cut? I’m sorry,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“Cut! Cut it!” JJ said. “It’s OK, Zach. We’ll take it from the top.”

Zach nodded and waited while they reset the cameras and they ran through the scene again. 

“I’m scared.” As Chris said the line, Zach leaned in.

“Cut! Zach, you’re in the shot.”

“Sorry, sorry. God, I’m sorry.”

“No problems, we’ll reset.”

“I’m sorry,” Zach repeated to Chris through the glass. 

“You OK?” Chris mouthed at him through the glass. Zach just looked down.

Five minutes later they were rolling again.

“I’m scared.” 

Zach felt a heat and a pressure in his chest.

“Help me not be.”

It grew outwards, smothering him, taking his breath.

“How do you choose not to _feel_?”

Suddenly, Zach was so hot he thought he might pass out. He stood up. “I’m sorry, I’ve got a cramp,” he lied, moving his left leg up and down. “Can I just walk it off?” Without waiting for a response from JJ, he left the set. 

“OK, that’s a ten minute break, everybody,” he heard JJ say as he moved away as quickly as possible. He headed for a set piece that was the transporter room, partially dismantled already because there would be no use for it again in the production.

“Hey. Hey, Zach!” 

He turned as Chris walked up behind him and immediately folded his arms tightly in front of him.

“Hey, are you OK?”

“Sorry, it was a little, um, hot in there.”

“I get it, man.” Chris, his own arms now crossed too, stepped in closer to him, until their upper arms touched. 

Zach nodded, lips pressed together. Bent forward, staring at the floor, at the toe of his boot that had a white-ish scuff on it. “I just never thought…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head, took a deep breath, then another. 

“Hey, come on, center yourself. We always knew this scene would be hard, right? But you just use that, man – you use everything you’re feeling to become _him_ in this moment.”

And that’s when the tears started. Zach turned away, facing the wall mere inches from him. “That’s just it, uhh…” He took another deep breath, but it was as if the air wouldn’t fill his lungs. “I’m finding it really fucking hard to separate myself from him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I feel like it’s _you_ in there, Chris. I feel like I’m watching you die.”

Zach could feel Chris draw away, and he clutched his arms around himself even tighter, felt his face redden. _God, what he must think about me,_ he thought. _Needy fucking asshole._

He was wondering if he could crawl behind this piece of set in front of him to die when he felt a cool hand on the back of his neck and the stirring of Chris’s breath against his face as he stepped in close. “It’s not,” he said, his voice going up, like it was a question. “It isn’t, man, it just isn’t.”

“I know,” he said, and he knew he was lying.

Chris knew it too. “No, you don’t. Do you?” Chris maneuvered himself around so that he was facing Zach, his hands on his upper arms, squeezing. “I know you’re all caught up in this in your head, and I wish I could tell you you should just use it, but not if it’s just gonna fuck you up.”

Zach shook his head.

“Don’t deny it, I know you better than that by now.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. If you weren’t this sensitive, you wouldn’t be you.” Chris smiled, glanced around them and leaned in to plant a light kiss on Zach’s temple. “Now, let’s get back in there. But if you’re still in that headspace, just remember one thing: I’m not going anywhere any time soon. You know why?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Because you’re so much fucking older than me – you’ll croak it long before I do.”

Zach laughed, and immediately the pressure in his chest dissipated and he could breathe again. “Fuck you.” He was only three years older, a fact Chris loved to throw in his face.

Chris grinned and headed back to the set. Zach straightened his back and lowered his arms, closed his eyes as he began a deep breathing exercise he’d learned in that one yoga class he’d taken a while back. It seemed to help. 

Minutes later, they were in their positions again. JJ was giving the crew some last instructions, and Chris winked at Zach, a mixture of such affection and understanding in his eyes, it caused a different kind of pressure in Zach’s chest, one he could deal with, one he wanted.

“Action!”

\----

Thank you for your time.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on Tumblr @rabidchild67, I hope you'll consider following me there.


End file.
